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Wallace Stegner’s Unsettled Country

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Mark Fiege, Michael J. Lansing, and Leisl Carr Childers consider Stegner’s racial liberalism and regional vision, his gendered view of the world, his understandings of conservation and the environment, his personal experience of economic collapse and poverty, his yearning for community, and his abiding attachment to the West.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 18, 2024

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This video video is a detailed discussion about Wallace Stegner, a significant Western American writer and intellectual who passed away nearly 30 years ago. The speaker emphasizes Stegner's connections to Montana State University, where they hold the Wallace Stegner chair in Western American Studies, and outlines a recent symposium held at the university to reassess Stegner's legacy in light of contemporary issues like climate change, social instability, and racial conflicts.

The symposium aimed to explore Stegner's relevance today, inviting diverse perspectives from scholars and writers, particularly younger voices, to engage critically with Stegner's work. It was noted that much of the early discourse surrounding Stegner was overly admiring, and there was a current push to analyze his work with a more critical lens.

This video video also highlights a collaborative effort that emerged from the symposium, eventually leading to a publication of essays reflecting on Stegner's contributions to literature and environmentalism. It asserts that while Stegner’s work has limitations, particularly concerning representation, his insights remain compelling and necessary for understanding the complexities of the American West.

Key themes discussed include Stegner's literary diversity, work ethic, and engagement with contemporary societal issues. The speaker reflects on the necessity of grappling with Stegner's legacy in modern discourse, emphasizing that while he was a flawed individual, his thoughts on community and the human condition continue to resonate and provide valuable context for today's challenges. This video video concludes with an affirmation of Stegner's significance in American literature and history, encouraging readers to reconsider his work and its implications for present issues.

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Wallace Stegner is an important Western American writer

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and intellectual,

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and he had a very close affectionate tie

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to the university that where I, teach

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and research Montana State University.

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And I hold the Wallace Stegner chair in

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Western American Studies.

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Um, I'm the first person to hold that chair

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for any length of time.

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Um, quite a passage of time had gone by, you know,

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since Stegner was gone.

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We were approaching 30 years.

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And I, they, there was a motivation on the part of,

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of colleagues, in the College of Letters

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and Science, to reconsider Stegner in his work,

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given his prominence to some degree.

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He had seemed to have been bypassed by history.

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You know, he's an old white guy,

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once very important in his time.

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And the question arose in light of the crises,

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and instabilities anxieties

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and so forth, sweeping across the American West,

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climate change, racial problems,

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the intense growth, the region's undergoing and so forth.

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It seemed like a, a good time to, you know,

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reappraise, stegner's life

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and work with a view toward, the problems

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that the region, the nation,

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and even the planet are facing today.

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You know, what stegner's usefulness,

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in this particular moment, in which,

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in which we find ourselves the prompt to

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reconsider stigma's life

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and work resulted in a symposium

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at Montana State University.

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So this idea that is Cigna still relevant for our times?

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Can Stegner still have something worthwhile to say

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to help us out with, in light of the problems

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that we're facing in the west, the nation and the world?

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Can we have a symposium in which we invite knowledgeable,

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interested scholars, writers, thinkers to MSU

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to help us engage in that reappraisal?

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So I think that was part of the motivation.

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You know, it was stigmas tied to the university, to the de

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to the chair that I hold,

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to the Stegner programming at MSU Montana State University.

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Um, the question, is he still useful or not?

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And then that, then that turned into the idea

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for a symposium,

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held at Montana State University in which a group

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of people would come together to,

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to talk it over and think about it.

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Well, we put out a call for papers.

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You know, we issued a general invitation

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to anybody out there in the American West

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and beyond that, who might be interested in coming

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to Montana State University, to Bozeman, Montana, to,

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participate in the symposium.

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Um, and we were looking for a range of people.

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You know, it's easy to get, older people,

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older baby boomers, for example,

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to get enthusiastic about Stegner

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because he was one of the great writers

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of the boomer's time, you know?

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But we didn't want to just have old people.

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We wanted young people. We wanted different perspectives.

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Um, we wanted critical perspectives on Stegner.

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Um, the first books that came out,

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that appraised his work were very adulatory, you know,

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and rightly so in many ways.

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Um, but with the passage

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of almost three decades since his death,

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we felt it was time to have people take,

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a critical look at stigma too.

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Um, so that's how it, how it happened.

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And we got a bunch of people, some outstanding scholars,

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to come to the campus and join us, for this event.

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So a series of, sessions, you know,

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in which people presented aspects of,

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their work on Stegner, his life

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and his potentially enduring utility.

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And some of these, the public was invited to them.

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When Mark Fiji puts out a call for papers for a symposium,

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a lot of people answer, including myself

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and my co-author, Adam Sowards.

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Um, so I was super excited to participate in the symposium

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and start grappling with some of stag's ideas, particularly

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around this concept of the Geography of Hope, which

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didn't know where that phrase came from.

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And I think maybe that's sort of a, a way into what

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was going on with the symposium is everybody

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who attended had different pathways

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to stagner some more robust than others,

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which made our conversation really interesting.

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That symposium, was in Bozeman

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as Mark suggested in May, 2019.

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And I think one of the more powerful things about the two

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days that we spent together in Bozeman thinking

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and talking about Stegner in relation

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to the overlapping crises in the American West,

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was the need to go further, to go beyond a symposium,

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to think about a volume that brought some

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of the best pieces together.

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Um, and it was, that project,

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which really got going, you know, right before

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and then into the beginning of the global pandemic,

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that, you know, allowed, a couple of us

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that were authors myself

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and Liesel to, to help Mark in the work of editing.

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I think, you know, co-editing anything,

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but especially a collection, from a wide range

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of colleagues and scholars and intellectuals is tough work.

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Um, and one of the things

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that we learned in the symposium was

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the power of collaboration.

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And I think that, that brought Liesl

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and I onto the project as co-editors with Mark.

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And it's been that collaboration that's been so powerful.

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It's one that we actually also modeled,

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because of this great, kind of plan that Liesel came up

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with, for the authors themselves,

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in which the authors would collaborate on revisions

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as we prepared the volume for publication

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as they thought about changing those symposium papers

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into something that's gonna appear in print.

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Um, not always an easy process,

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but again, we focused on collaboration

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because given the overlap in crises, given the example

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of Stegner and how he imagined work

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and how he imagined writing

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and how he imagined the big questions of his time,

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collaboration seemed to be the answer.

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And that became a very powerful thread for us.

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I really appreciated, Liesel

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and Michael stepping up with their offer of help.

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You know, it was in the midst of the pandemic

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and that threw everything off, you know,

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and I really appreciated it

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that they came forward with some ideas.

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I think one of the key pieces for me is

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that I knew both of them.

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I knew a number of the symposium participants

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and the people who ended up contributing essays.

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So I felt close to Liesel and Michael

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and I really had appreciated that they had come

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to the symposium, and they're both very creative

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and innovative people.

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Um, and Liesel came up with this fantastic idea,

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as Michael says, to have, the members,

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gather together in groups online

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and workshop each other's papers, with, again,

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a renewed eye toward the problems

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that were going on in the West.

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And I think that brought everybody together.

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Um, and it certainly made my close relationship with Liesel

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and Michael even closer.

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So even though we're distant

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and we could communicate, with video conference calls,

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telephone calls and so forth,

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and I think it really helped bring the essays

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in the book together.

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The standard critique of an anthology is that, you know,

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they're all over the place, right?

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Well, I think, these essays cohere,

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to an unusual degree

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'cause they are in dialogue with one another.

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And another element of this is that, Lisa, Michael

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and I were reading all the essays,

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and we ourselves also working with the authors to,

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revise and massage 'em

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and get 'em into the best shape possible

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as the author saw it.

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So I think Michael is right that,

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building the book was actually, modeling

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what we thought was one of Stegner's most powerful messages,

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which was that in a time of crisis, you know,

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with all the deficits the west can have, one

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of the best things that people can do is to reach out

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to one another and create something, create something

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that's useful, live

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and work in community with one another,

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and try to build an alternative and better future.

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I'll give a bigger picture of Stegner, but I'll invite Lisa

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and Michael to jump in with some of the themes.

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Um, Stegner was a major western

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writer and intellectual.

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Um, he lived from 1911 to 1993,

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and while he was alive, to some degree,

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he became synonymous with the American West.

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Um, he, was born in Iowa,

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but he spent almost all of his life in the west,

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and he had a lot to say about it.

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Um, and he was a brilliant writer, a brilliant novelist,

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brilliant, short story writer, brilliant essayist.

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And he wrote some works of history

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that were quite popular and provocative.

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Um, so Stegner was a major person in his time.

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He also was a conservationist.

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And although he always said that

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what he really wanted more than anything else was

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to be a novelist and to get credit for that,

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because of his values about the environment,

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because of, of his values about the quality

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of life in the American West, he became involved.

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He involved himself in, conservation issues.

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Um, so that kind of is the bigger picture of Stegner.

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He won major prizes.

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He won the Pulitzer Prize for the novel Angle of Repose.

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Um, he won the National Book Award for the novel,

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the Spectator Bird.

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Um, and, he, he was very prolific.

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Um, so when people thought about Western issues,

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during Stegner's life, one

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of the first people they ever talked about

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and reached for, went to the bookshelf

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for was Wallace Stegner.

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The Sub-themes and the anthology that, that we found ran

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through all the essays.

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Um, but the essays clustered around one theme in particular.

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So the sections ended up being, developed

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around these themes of ruin, realism,

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and possibility in the American West.

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And one of the best things about Stegner's writing,

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as a western historian,

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and also someone who does environmental history, is how he

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sort of looked at the world

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and didn't really flinch from how it was actually operating

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and how things were actually unfolding in, in his,

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his region, his, neighborhood in areas

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that he cared about, over concepts that he cared about,

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but would look at them with some very, with a very stern eye

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and a very discerning eye.

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And I think one of the things that captured,

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my attention in this process was the way in which

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not only did he focus on community,

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but he was willing to sort of face down this, this problem

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of individualism that's been so attached to the West.

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And I don't think we normally think of Stagner in this way.

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I mean, we, when we class someone as a western historian

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or a western writer, there's sort of a trope

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around Western history that focuses on like wilderness

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and individualism

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and things that have been so attached to the American West

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that it's almost hard to talk about the region without a

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nod towards those things.

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But I think Stagner just cut right through that, cut right

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through that noise, and right through that misperception,

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and then was willing to sort of push us to think about

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the ways in which this region is very precious

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and its resources are precious, its environment is precious,

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but we're not doing so well with those things.

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And that is certainly pointing directly at a problem.

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The problem of climate change that we face today.

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I always think about three things when I think about

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Wallace Stagner, and his legacy.

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And those three things are the, the ways in which he

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wrote in so many different ways.

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Um, he wrote fiction, he wrote short stories.

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He wrote, beautiful nonfiction essays.

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He wrote creative, what we today call creative nonfiction.

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Um, and he was also, someone who wrote history.

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So somebody as a writer in an intellectual with real range

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and also a range of subject matter all related to

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in some way, shape or form the American West.

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Second thing I think about

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with Egner is the ways in which he just worked really hard.

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He was a hard worker. He was prodigious in his output.

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He published so many things.

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Um, he was the kind of person who, you know, woke up

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and worked almost every day.

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Um, and so hard work was at the center of his kind

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of ethical values at the center

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of his kind of ethical world.

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And he expected the same of others, as well.

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And then of course, I think about engagement.

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I think about the ways in which Stegner was engaged

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with the world around him,

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and he was engaged with the issues of his time.

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He was engaged. He understood that the role

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of the intellectual or the writer was

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to not be separated from, to be part of, instead to be part

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of whatever the particular, social

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or cultural conversation,

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that was going on at that moment.

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And I think this anthology,

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this book reflects those three things.

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There's a range in these essays, a range of perspectives,

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a range of ways of seeing

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and thinking about Stegner, a range

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of disciplinary backgrounds from the authors.

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Um, so that range that you see in Stegner's life

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and experience, that range in his writing

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and intellectual work is actually reflected in this book.

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I think hard work. Uh, it's not easy to to,

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to rewrite an essay in the middle of a global pandemic.

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And every one of our authors stepped up,

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and figured out how to do that.

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And actually, in some cases, really kind of reshaped

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what they had shared with us in Bozeman in May of 2019,

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at a, at a moment when it was not easy

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to engage in hard work.

14:13.715 --> 14:16.975
Um, and then finally, every one of the essays is,

14:17.315 --> 14:19.135
is engaged with these questions.

14:19.835 --> 14:22.615
Um, these, these overlapping crises, the question

14:22.615 --> 14:26.495
of climate change, racial injustice, the need

14:26.495 --> 14:28.535
for inclusion of Native Nations

14:28.555 --> 14:33.255
and native peoples, as we, as we grapple with the issues

14:33.255 --> 14:34.855
that are facing the region today.

14:35.195 --> 14:39.745
And so, you know, the question of range and hard work

14:40.085 --> 14:42.185
and, you know, direct engagement with the world

14:42.415 --> 14:44.985
that you see in Stegner, you see in this book.

14:44.985 --> 14:46.945
And I think that's another thing that makes this book kind

14:46.945 --> 14:50.145
of stand apart, from a typical, anthology

14:50.205 --> 14:51.325
or collection of essays.

14:51.805 --> 14:55.165
I was flipping through the book, looking at the essays

14:55.425 --> 14:58.285
and it's been very rewarding, useful

14:58.285 --> 14:59.565
to go back and reread them.

15:00.065 --> 15:04.525
And I was looking at Melody Grow Grow's essay on

15:05.345 --> 15:07.085
the Education of a Westerner.

15:07.225 --> 15:10.885
And Melody Growl is a very prominent scholar

15:11.185 --> 15:13.005
of Western American literature.

15:13.845 --> 15:15.105
And it was fascinating.

15:15.485 --> 15:19.825
And that essay, begins with stigma's,

15:20.365 --> 15:22.945
recognition that, a western

15:23.535 --> 15:26.905
education oftentimes was one of deficits.

15:27.835 --> 15:31.375
You know, there wasn't a lot of depth to that education.

15:31.835 --> 15:35.295
And this makes me think of l Liesel's reflection on,

15:35.795 --> 15:37.815
you know, ruin, realism and possibility.

15:37.835 --> 15:39.735
And there's a way in which, you know,

15:39.735 --> 15:40.735
in Stegner's thought

15:40.755 --> 15:43.735
and Stegner's writings, deficits had a way

15:43.735 --> 15:44.975
of becoming assets.

15:45.915 --> 15:49.295
So things that we're missing, things that are not there

15:50.315 --> 15:55.015
absent, underdeveloped, damage, these become sources

15:55.155 --> 15:58.175
of distinctiveness insight and strength.

15:59.035 --> 16:01.575
And I think that theme recurs throughout his work.

16:01.755 --> 16:04.575
And I think you see elements of that in the book as well.

16:05.395 --> 16:08.295
You know, he takes a region that's incredibly beautiful,

16:08.715 --> 16:10.535
but that's based on exploitation

16:11.035 --> 16:13.575
and the ruin that comes with that exploitation.

16:14.275 --> 16:15.935
And you feel terrible about it

16:16.415 --> 16:18.095
'cause there's things that are missing in your life.

16:18.115 --> 16:19.175
And yet it's those things.

16:19.365 --> 16:23.655
It's the experience of that, the scars that can accrue

16:23.735 --> 16:26.495
because of that, that are distinctive to people

16:26.555 --> 16:28.935
who often grow up in the West with that stuff.

16:29.355 --> 16:31.815
Um, and they're the sources of these powerful insights.

16:32.235 --> 16:33.815
And I think Stegner believed that

16:34.335 --> 16:37.015
although he was a regional writer, he was a regionalist,

16:37.445 --> 16:42.015
that he was pointing to problems, conditions,

16:42.835 --> 16:45.455
that in fact had elements of the universal.

16:45.915 --> 16:47.495
Um, he believed that his stories,

16:47.815 --> 16:51.255
although centered in the West, actually were relevant,

16:51.475 --> 16:53.575
for way broader than that.

16:54.195 --> 16:56.455
Um, that this was literature he was engaged in.

16:56.555 --> 16:59.055
He was reflecting on the human condition in many ways.

16:59.115 --> 17:01.495
And I think that's a really powerful message.

17:02.115 --> 17:06.495
Um, when we're looking at, global problems of all kinds.

17:06.915 --> 17:11.055
You know, what can sticker do to help us to first confront

17:11.515 --> 17:13.535
and accept those harsh realities?

17:13.535 --> 17:16.215
But how can we turn these things into assets,

17:16.365 --> 17:19.695
into positives, beginning with community?

17:20.015 --> 17:22.135
I don't think you can train in the history

17:22.135 --> 17:25.335
of the American West without encountering

17:25.335 --> 17:26.495
Stagner in some form.

17:27.535 --> 17:31.435
And what I mean by that is, I think that historians

17:31.435 --> 17:32.835
and people who care about this region,

17:33.545 --> 17:35.675
they don't even know they're encountering stagner.

17:36.015 --> 17:38.275
That's, that's sort of the first layer of his legacy,

17:38.695 --> 17:41.195
is you can't really understand the West

17:41.195 --> 17:44.635
and understand its history without seeing in some way

17:44.635 --> 17:46.915
through the lens of what Stagner has left in

17:46.915 --> 17:47.995
terms of his body of work.

17:48.655 --> 17:50.525
Um, both whether it's fiction

17:50.705 --> 17:53.925
or whether it's, nonfiction or whether it's history.

17:54.665 --> 17:58.365
So first and foremost, this volume is really meant to sort

17:58.365 --> 18:02.765
of recover stag's presence in this conversation

18:03.465 --> 18:06.285
and look at some things that we probably have taken

18:06.385 --> 18:08.445
for granted, scholars

18:08.445 --> 18:11.325
and then readers of the, about the West, readers

18:11.345 --> 18:14.365
of Western history, readers of the Western genre.

18:15.305 --> 18:18.285
So we didn't take time

18:18.345 --> 18:20.725
to really untangle all these nuances,

18:21.185 --> 18:23.605
but if you look through the book, just at first glance,

18:23.865 --> 18:27.085
we did things like, choose Epigraphs

18:27.275 --> 18:29.165
that you don't normally hear.

18:29.825 --> 18:32.605
The essays might focus on some of the,

18:32.825 --> 18:34.885
the more catchier phrases of Stagner,

18:35.345 --> 18:37.125
and a lot of the meat of that,

18:37.125 --> 18:39.645
including his most famous book, angle of Repose,

18:39.675 --> 18:40.885
appears in the essays.

18:41.305 --> 18:43.885
But then we tried to punctuate those essays

18:43.915 --> 18:47.365
with these other pieces that perhaps people have forgotten.

18:47.865 --> 18:50.565
And I think that was a, a piece of this process that I,

18:50.805 --> 18:54.485
I really enjoyed the most, is sort of not only grappling

18:54.485 --> 18:57.165
with the known and making that visible, so we're not making

18:57.225 --> 18:59.445
so many more assumptions about those, you know, the,

18:59.445 --> 19:01.685
the elements of Stanger that we now have just taken

19:01.865 --> 19:04.365
for granted because they're, they are literally everywhere,

19:04.945 --> 19:07.125
but also lift up the less,

19:07.355 --> 19:10.565
discussed the less visible elements,

19:10.565 --> 19:13.365
because it's, his contribution is still ongoing.

19:13.795 --> 19:17.205
This is a, a volume, a book that really doesn't only try

19:17.205 --> 19:20.525
to reassess Stegner and identify what is useful

19:20.525 --> 19:23.725
and what is less useful of Stegner for our time,

19:24.105 --> 19:28.165
but also tries to recover the whole Stegner,

19:28.225 --> 19:30.805
or something akin to it as Liesel suggests.

19:31.385 --> 19:34.045
And that includes, you know, one of our authors,

19:34.045 --> 19:36.605
Nancy Cook, wrote an essay about the Stegner Fellowships,

19:37.145 --> 19:39.485
and thinking about Stegner not just as a writer,

19:39.625 --> 19:41.925
not just as a commentator, not just

19:41.925 --> 19:45.125
as a conservationist, but also as a teacher.

19:46.185 --> 19:49.125
And I think that's a really important essay.

19:49.125 --> 19:50.245
It appears in the middle of the book.

19:50.245 --> 19:53.325
In some ways, the book turns on, on that essay,

19:53.325 --> 19:56.405
because when you start to really evaluate, the role

19:56.405 --> 19:57.925
that Stegner had,

19:57.985 --> 20:00.885
in the creative writing program at Stanford in the years

20:01.135 --> 20:04.165
after World War ii, you start to see that, yes,

20:04.165 --> 20:07.245
there are some famous names that, went through

20:07.245 --> 20:09.285
that program when Stegner was directing it.

20:09.285 --> 20:11.365
And of course, it's a program that continues on today,

20:11.385 --> 20:13.565
making Stanford Art Center for Creative Writing.

20:14.225 --> 20:16.085
Um, but you actually,

20:16.085 --> 20:18.885
because of Nancy Cook's work in our book,

20:19.095 --> 20:21.605
learn about some of the, the students,

20:21.665 --> 20:22.925
who you may know less about.

20:23.105 --> 20:26.005
And by doing so, you learn a lot more about Stegner

20:26.595 --> 20:29.655
as a human being and what his commitments were,

20:29.655 --> 20:30.815
what his limitations were,

20:31.155 --> 20:32.695
but also the ways in which he could foster

20:32.915 --> 20:37.575
and support a wide range of students, a wide range of forms

20:37.595 --> 20:38.895
of writing,

20:38.915 --> 20:43.695
and not just the kind of handful of more famous people,

20:43.755 --> 20:45.095
who emerged from that program.

20:46.125 --> 20:48.615
And so I think, you know, learning about Stegner

20:48.615 --> 20:50.975
as a teacher is an, is a perfect example of

20:50.975 --> 20:53.975
how this book starts to get at this broader question of,

20:54.315 --> 20:57.335
you know, all the many different things that Stegner was.

20:57.475 --> 20:59.055
And only if you do that,

20:59.075 --> 21:01.655
that's the only way you can actually fairly

21:02.695 --> 21:05.495
evaluate fairly critique Stegner and some of his ideas

21:05.755 --> 21:09.555
and some of the work that he did, and also rehabilitate

21:10.135 --> 21:11.675
and kind of bring back

21:11.675 --> 21:14.275
and say that wow, there was some real insight here,

21:14.275 --> 21:17.155
because of those same commitments, fully human,

21:17.555 --> 21:19.355
a fully human stigma, deeply flawed,

21:19.505 --> 21:21.395
like all like all human beings,

21:21.455 --> 21:24.795
and yet also unlike many other human beings, someone

21:24.795 --> 21:26.915
with great insight that actually resonates

21:27.025 --> 21:28.315
through the decades.

21:29.465 --> 21:32.315
Cigna's legacy is a really important question,

21:33.335 --> 21:36.315
and I think Liesel touched upon this a little bit,

21:36.735 --> 21:40.315
but it's, it, it really is very difficult, if not impossible

21:40.315 --> 21:43.435
to assess the 20th century West,

21:43.495 --> 21:45.995
at least without considering Cigna.

21:46.415 --> 21:50.675
Um, he both wrote about it and he influenced it.

21:51.255 --> 21:54.515
So if you wanna understand the 20th century American West,

21:54.615 --> 21:57.315
if you wanna understand that history, at some point,

21:57.535 --> 22:00.155
you have to reckon with Wallace Stegner.

22:00.935 --> 22:03.555
Um, he was far from perfect, especially

22:03.615 --> 22:06.435
by today's standards, but you gotta deal with him.

22:06.975 --> 22:09.555
Uh, a really interesting contribution.

22:09.935 --> 22:11.715
Um, the first essay

22:11.715 --> 22:14.835
after my introductory essay is by Alex Hernandez.

22:15.575 --> 22:19.475
And Alex is a rising star in the National Park Service.

22:19.695 --> 22:21.315
She is a young woman of color,

22:22.015 --> 22:25.435
and Alex, of course read Stegner,

22:25.435 --> 22:26.515
through her perspective.

22:27.095 --> 22:29.915
And she was very critical of Stegner. It was powerful.

22:30.535 --> 22:33.835
And she takes aim in particular at a book

22:33.835 --> 22:37.515
that Stegner wrote, one Nation in which,

22:37.845 --> 22:40.315
which appeared right after the Second World War.

22:40.535 --> 22:43.675
And ostensibly was an attempt to celebrate

22:44.225 --> 22:47.435
both the diversity and the unity of the United States.

22:47.905 --> 22:50.275
Stagner acknowledged that the United States is made up

22:50.275 --> 22:52.115
of all of these different kinds of people,

22:52.655 --> 22:55.195
and yet in the midst of that, the, the,

22:55.415 --> 22:59.155
the implicit assumption in all of his stigmas in all

22:59.155 --> 23:02.995
of Stegner's work was when, when he said Westerner

23:03.415 --> 23:04.635
or Western American,

23:05.375 --> 23:07.995
he really was talking about a white person,

23:08.485 --> 23:09.915
especially a white man.

23:10.755 --> 23:13.695
And I think that's very characteristic of men,

23:13.695 --> 23:16.895
especially liberal men of his time.

23:17.515 --> 23:22.215
You know, they express sympathy for awareness of,

23:22.355 --> 23:23.735
all kinds of people in the West.

23:24.115 --> 23:28.975
Um, in Stegner's book Wolf Willow, he acknowledges that,

23:29.245 --> 23:31.935
Nazi Germany did not invent genocide that

23:31.935 --> 23:33.575
that happened in the American West.

23:34.115 --> 23:35.935
And that's an unusual thing to say

23:36.075 --> 23:37.655
for someone in the early 1960s.

23:37.795 --> 23:39.375
And yet, and yet still,

23:39.715 --> 23:42.415
and with all, when he said Western American,

23:42.515 --> 23:45.215
he usually had in mind a guy like himself.

23:46.105 --> 23:48.285
But here's a really interesting side of that.

23:48.665 --> 23:52.245
Um, we came together, a bunch of us,

23:52.585 --> 23:54.525
at an academic scholarly meeting,

23:54.545 --> 23:56.765
the Western History Association in Los

23:56.765 --> 23:58.285
Angeles in late October.

23:58.945 --> 24:02.725
And among our presenters was Alex Hernandez.

24:03.345 --> 24:06.725
And one of the things she said is that she's discovered

24:06.795 --> 24:09.485
that in the National Park Service,

24:09.855 --> 24:12.685
which probably employs more historians

24:13.385 --> 24:14.885
and people who are oriented

24:14.885 --> 24:18.925
to history than any other government agency, she found

24:18.925 --> 24:21.925
that National Park Service employees,

24:22.215 --> 24:24.725
staff people still referred to Wallace Stegner,

24:25.155 --> 24:26.885
that Stegner was useful

24:26.905 --> 24:31.125
for them in talking about the American West, its problems,

24:31.665 --> 24:35.085
its beauty, in framing,

24:35.155 --> 24:36.845
ethical positions and so forth.

24:37.265 --> 24:40.085
So one of the things that Alex concluded, she stood

24:40.245 --> 24:43.205
behind her critique, she actually developed it.

24:43.205 --> 24:44.765
It was fabulous, you know, it was fantastic,

24:44.965 --> 24:46.405
a wonderful scholar, a young person.

24:46.945 --> 24:50.405
Um, but in the end she said, you have to deal with Stegner.

24:50.405 --> 24:51.605
You gotta reckon with him.

24:51.995 --> 24:55.605
Readers need to take away an awareness of Stegner

24:56.425 --> 24:59.565
and see his work as an invitation.

25:00.265 --> 25:02.005
Um, Stegner is still worth reading.

25:02.435 --> 25:06.245
Stegner still has something to say to us three decades

25:06.415 --> 25:09.085
after his passing about how to think about

25:09.305 --> 25:11.405
and act in the American West.

25:12.105 --> 25:13.325
So I hope that our book

25:13.585 --> 25:18.005
and our essays lead lead people to some of Stegner's work.

25:18.625 --> 25:22.805
Um, for me, you know, the Big Rock Candy Mountain novel,

25:22.955 --> 25:27.485
Wolf Willow, which is a wonderful magical combination

25:27.585 --> 25:29.805
of fiction and history and memoir.

25:30.225 --> 25:31.885
Um, the American West has living space.

25:31.885 --> 25:34.805
Everybody's gonna have some book of Stegner's

25:34.805 --> 25:36.125
that really speaks to them.

25:36.625 --> 25:39.685
Um, but I think the ultimate value of our book,

25:40.255 --> 25:41.925
while the Cigna's unsettled country,

25:42.425 --> 25:45.325
is if it leads people into Cigna's work

25:45.745 --> 25:47.765
and then helps them as they try to sort out

25:47.765 --> 25:50.405
and deal with the problems in their particular part

25:50.405 --> 25:52.405
of the West in which they're living, you

25:52.405 --> 25:56.325
Can't just brush stigma off because it is so embedded.

25:56.665 --> 26:00.765
So contending with authors like this contending

26:00.765 --> 26:03.445
with the presence of Stegner's work

26:03.585 --> 26:06.445
and his influence, you, you can't just ignore it.

26:06.905 --> 26:08.605
Um, we have to grapple with it.

26:08.605 --> 26:11.005
We have to reset it in our minds.

26:11.045 --> 26:13.565
I think that that's what this process really did for me,

26:13.665 --> 26:15.325
is it sort of allowed me

26:15.325 --> 26:18.285
to put Stagner into a better head space.

26:18.945 --> 26:23.005
Not ignore him, but not embrace him as,

26:23.425 --> 26:24.765
as he once was, right?

26:24.875 --> 26:26.965
He's not a prophet of the American West.

26:27.465 --> 26:29.485
He is a man who lived in the West

26:29.625 --> 26:32.165
and grappled with the same issues that we see today.

26:32.645 --> 26:35.325
I hope, and actually, I, I'm convinced that readers

26:35.325 --> 26:37.085
of our book will come away with two things.

26:37.345 --> 26:40.565
One, I think even if they know, Stegner's work well,

26:40.565 --> 26:42.605
they're gonna learn something new about Stegner.

26:43.265 --> 26:45.885
Um, as a person, as a thinker, as a writer, as a scholar,

26:45.885 --> 26:47.325
as a teacher,

26:47.345 --> 26:50.285
as conservationist in whatever way you wanna take it,

26:50.285 --> 26:52.125
they'll learn something new about Stegner.

26:52.585 --> 26:55.125
The second thing that I think readers will take away is

26:55.125 --> 26:58.365
that, he was as significant as my colleagues suggest,

26:58.435 --> 26:59.925
he's a, he's a giant,

27:00.185 --> 27:02.885
and he simultaneously has feet of clay

27:03.705 --> 27:06.005
and brilliant, consistent

27:06.385 --> 27:09.685
and absolutely critical insights that can help us wrestle

27:09.755 --> 27:11.485
with the issues of our time.

00:00 - Wallace Stegner is an important Western American writer and intellectual, and he had a very close affectionate tie to the university that where I, teach and research Montana State University. And I hold the Wallace Stegner chair in

00:19 - Western American Studies. I'm the first person to hold that chair for any length of time. quite a passage of time had gone by, you know, since Stegner was gone. We were approaching 30 years. And I, they, there was a motivation on the part of, of colleagues, in the College of Letters and Science, to reconsider Stegner in his work, given his prominence to some degree.

00:47 - He had seemed to have been bypassed by history. You know, he's an old white guy, once very important in his time. And the question arose in light of the crises, and instabilities anxieties and so forth, sweeping across the American West, climate change, racial problems, the intense growth, the region's undergoing and so forth. It seemed like a, a good time to, you know, reappraise, stegner's life

01:17 - and work with a view toward, the problems that the region, the nation, and even the planet are facing today. You know, what stegner's usefulness, in this particular moment, in which, in which we find ourselves the prompt to reconsider stigma's life and work resulted in a symposium at Montana State University. So this idea that is Cigna still relevant for our times?

01:45 - Can Stegner still have something worthwhile to say to help us out with, in light of the problems that we're facing in the west, the nation and the world? Can we have a symposium in which we invite knowledgeable, interested scholars, writers, thinkers to MSU to help us engage in that reappraisal? So I think that was part of the motivation. You know, it was stigmas tied to the university, to the de to the chair that I hold, to the Stegner programming at MSU Montana State University.

02:16 - the question, is he still useful or not? And then that, then that turned into the idea for a symposium, held at Montana State University in which a group of people would come together to, to talk it over and think about it. Well, we put out a call for papers. You know, we issued a general invitation to anybody out there in the American West and beyond that, who might be interested in coming

02:43 - to Montana State University, to Bozeman, Montana, to, participate in the symposium. and we were looking for a range of people. You know, it's easy to get, older people, older baby boomers, for example, to get enthusiastic about Stegner because he was one of the great writers of the boomer's time, you know? But we didn't want to just have old people. We wanted young people. We wanted different perspectives.

03:10 - we wanted critical perspectives on Stegner. the first books that came out, that appraised his work were very adulatory, you know, and rightly so in many ways. but with the passage of almost three decades since his death, we felt it was time to have people take, a critical look at stigma too. so that's how it, how it happened. And we got a bunch of people, some outstanding scholars,

03:39 - to come to the campus and join us, for this event. So a series of, sessions, you know, in which people presented aspects of, their work on Stegner, his life and his potentially enduring utility. And some of these, the public was invited to them. When Mark Fiji puts out a call for papers for a symposium, a lot of people answer, including myself and my co-author, Adam Sowards. so I was super excited to participate in the symposium

04:08 - and start grappling with some of stag's ideas, particularly around this concept of the Geography of Hope, which didn't know where that phrase came from. And I think maybe that's sort of a, a way into what was going on with the symposium is everybody who attended had different pathways to stagner some more robust than others, which made our conversation really interesting. That symposium, was in Bozeman as Mark suggested in May, 2019.

04:38 - And I think one of the more powerful things about the two days that we spent together in Bozeman thinking and talking about Stegner in relation to the overlapping crises in the American West, was the need to go further, to go beyond a symposium, to think about a volume that brought some of the best pieces together. and it was, that project, which really got going, you know, right before and then into the beginning of the global pandemic,

05:07 - that, you know, allowed, a couple of us that were authors myself and Liesel to, to help Mark in the work of editing. I think, you know, co-editing anything, but especially a collection, from a wide range of colleagues and scholars and intellectuals is tough work. and one of the things that we learned in the symposium was the power of collaboration. And I think that, that brought Liesl

05:35 - and I onto the project as co-editors with Mark. And it's been that collaboration that's been so powerful. It's one that we actually also modeled, because of this great, kind of plan that Liesel came up with, for the authors themselves, in which the authors would collaborate on revisions as we prepared the volume for publication as they thought about changing those symposium papers into something that's gonna appear in print. not always an easy process,

06:01 - but again, we focused on collaboration because given the overlap in crises, given the example of Stegner and how he imagined work and how he imagined writing and how he imagined the big questions of his time, collaboration seemed to be the answer. And that became a very powerful thread for us. I really appreciated, Liesel and Michael stepping up with their offer of help. You know, it was in the midst of the pandemic

06:24 - and that threw everything off, you know, and I really appreciated it that they came forward with some ideas. I think one of the key pieces for me is that I knew both of them. I knew a number of the symposium participants and the people who ended up contributing essays. So I felt close to Liesel and Michael and I really had appreciated that they had come to the symposium, and they're both very creative

06:50 - and innovative people. and Liesel came up with this fantastic idea, as Michael says, to have, the members, gather together in groups online and workshop each other's papers, with, again, a renewed eye toward the problems that were going on in the West. And I think that brought everybody together. and it certainly made my close relationship with Liesel and Michael even closer.

07:17 - So even though we're distant and we could communicate, with video conference calls, telephone calls and so forth, and I think it really helped bring the essays in the book together. The standard critique of an anthology is that, you know, they're all over the place, right? Well, I think, these essays cohere, to an unusual degree 'cause they are in dialogue with one another.

07:42 - And another element of this is that, Lisa, Michael and I were reading all the essays, and we ourselves also working with the authors to, revise and massage 'em and get 'em into the best shape possible as the author saw it. So I think Michael is right that, building the book was actually, modeling what we thought was one of Stegner's most powerful messages, which was that in a time of crisis, you know,

08:11 - with all the deficits the west can have, one of the best things that people can do is to reach out to one another and create something, create something that's useful, live and work in community with one another, and try to build an alternative and better future. I'll give a bigger picture of Stegner, but I'll invite Lisa and Michael to jump in with some of the themes. Stegner was a major western writer and intellectual.

08:37 - he lived from 1911 to 1993, and while he was alive, to some degree, he became synonymous with the American West. he, was born in Iowa, but he spent almost all of his life in the west, and he had a lot to say about it. and he was a brilliant writer, a brilliant novelist, brilliant, short story writer, brilliant essayist. And he wrote some works of history that were quite popular and provocative.

09:10 - so Stegner was a major person in his time. He also was a conservationist. And although he always said that what he really wanted more than anything else was to be a novelist and to get credit for that, because of his values about the environment, because of, of his values about the quality of life in the American West, he became involved. He involved himself in, conservation issues. so that kind of is the bigger picture of Stegner.

09:35 - He won major prizes. He won the Pulitzer Prize for the novel Angle of Repose. he won the National Book Award for the novel, the Spectator Bird. and, he, he was very prolific. so when people thought about Western issues, during Stegner's life, one of the first people they ever talked about and reached for, went to the bookshelf for was Wallace Stegner.

10:01 - The Sub-themes and the anthology that, that we found ran through all the essays. but the essays clustered around one theme in particular. So the sections ended up being, developed around these themes of ruin, realism, and possibility in the American West. And one of the best things about Stegner's writing, as a western historian, and also someone who does environmental history, is how he sort of looked at the world

10:30 - and didn't really flinch from how it was actually operating and how things were actually unfolding in, in his, his region, his, neighborhood in areas that he cared about, over concepts that he cared about, but would look at them with some very, with a very stern eye and a very discerning eye. And I think one of the things that captured, my attention in this process was the way in which not only did he focus on community, but he was willing to sort of face down this, this problem

11:04 - of individualism that's been so attached to the West. And I don't think we normally think of Stagner in this way. I mean, we, when we class someone as a western historian or a western writer, there's sort of a trope around Western history that focuses on like wilderness and individualism and things that have been so attached to the American West that it's almost hard to talk about the region without a nod towards those things. But I think Stagner just cut right through that, cut right

11:35 - through that noise, and right through that misperception, and then was willing to sort of push us to think about the ways in which this region is very precious and its resources are precious, its environment is precious, but we're not doing so well with those things. And that is certainly pointing directly at a problem. The problem of climate change that we face today. I always think about three things when I think about Wallace Stagner, and his legacy. And those three things are the, the ways in which he

12:09 - wrote in so many different ways. he wrote fiction, he wrote short stories. He wrote, beautiful nonfiction essays. He wrote creative, what we today call creative nonfiction. and he was also, someone who wrote history. So somebody as a writer in an intellectual with real range and also a range of subject matter all related to in some way, shape or form the American West. Second thing I think about with Egner is the ways in which he just worked really hard.

12:40 - He was a hard worker. He was prodigious in his output. He published so many things. he was the kind of person who, you know, woke up and worked almost every day. and so hard work was at the center of his kind of ethical values at the center of his kind of ethical world. And he expected the same of others, as well. And then of course, I think about engagement. I think about the ways in which Stegner was engaged

13:07 - with the world around him, and he was engaged with the issues of his time. He was engaged. He understood that the role of the intellectual or the writer was to not be separated from, to be part of, instead to be part of whatever the particular, social or cultural conversation, that was going on at that moment. And I think this anthology, this book reflects those three things.

13:30 - There's a range in these essays, a range of perspectives, a range of ways of seeing and thinking about Stegner, a range of disciplinary backgrounds from the authors. so that range that you see in Stegner's life and experience, that range in his writing and intellectual work is actually reflected in this book. I think hard work. it's not easy to to, to rewrite an essay in the middle of a global pandemic. And every one of our authors stepped up,

13:59 - and figured out how to do that. And actually, in some cases, really kind of reshaped what they had shared with us in Bozeman in May of 2019, at a, at a moment when it was not easy to engage in hard work. and then finally, every one of the essays is, is engaged with these questions. these, these overlapping crises, the question of climate change, racial injustice, the need for inclusion of Native Nations

14:28 - and native peoples, as we, as we grapple with the issues that are facing the region today. And so, you know, the question of range and hard work and, you know, direct engagement with the world that you see in Stegner, you see in this book. And I think that's another thing that makes this book kind of stand apart, from a typical, anthology or collection of essays. I was flipping through the book, looking at the essays and it's been very rewarding, useful

14:58 - to go back and reread them. And I was looking at Melody Grow Grow's essay on the Education of a Westerner. And Melody Growl is a very prominent scholar of Western American literature. And it was fascinating. And that essay, begins with stigma's, recognition that, a western education oftentimes was one of deficits. You know, there wasn't a lot of depth to that education.

15:31 - And this makes me think of l Liesel's reflection on, you know, ruin, realism and possibility. And there's a way in which, you know, in Stegner's thought and Stegner's writings, deficits had a way of becoming assets. So things that we're missing, things that are not there absent, underdeveloped, damage, these become sources of distinctiveness insight and strength. And I think that theme recurs throughout his work.

16:01 - And I think you see elements of that in the book as well. You know, he takes a region that's incredibly beautiful, but that's based on exploitation and the ruin that comes with that exploitation. And you feel terrible about it 'cause there's things that are missing in your life. And yet it's those things. It's the experience of that, the scars that can accrue because of that, that are distinctive to people who often grow up in the West with that stuff.

16:29 - and they're the sources of these powerful insights. And I think Stegner believed that although he was a regional writer, he was a regionalist, that he was pointing to problems, conditions, that in fact had elements of the universal. he believed that his stories, although centered in the West, actually were relevant, for way broader than that. that this was literature he was engaged in. He was reflecting on the human condition in many ways.

16:59 - And I think that's a really powerful message. when we're looking at, global problems of all kinds. You know, what can sticker do to help us to first confront and accept those harsh realities? But how can we turn these things into assets, into positives, beginning with community? I don't think you can train in the history of the American West without encountering Stagner in some form. And what I mean by that is, I think that historians

17:31 - and people who care about this region, they don't even know they're encountering stagner. That's, that's sort of the first layer of his legacy, is you can't really understand the West and understand its history without seeing in some way through the lens of what Stagner has left in terms of his body of work. both whether it's fiction or whether it's, nonfiction or whether it's history. So first and foremost, this volume is really meant to sort

17:58 - of recover stag's presence in this conversation and look at some things that we probably have taken for granted, scholars and then readers of the, about the West, readers of Western history, readers of the Western genre. So we didn't take time to really untangle all these nuances, but if you look through the book, just at first glance, we did things like, choose Epigraphs that you don't normally hear.

18:29 - The essays might focus on some of the, the more catchier phrases of Stagner, and a lot of the meat of that, including his most famous book, angle of Repose, appears in the essays. But then we tried to punctuate those essays with these other pieces that perhaps people have forgotten. And I think that was a, a piece of this process that I, I really enjoyed the most, is sort of not only grappling with the known and making that visible, so we're not making

18:57 - so many more assumptions about those, you know, the, the elements of Stanger that we now have just taken for granted because they're, they are literally everywhere, but also lift up the less, discussed the less visible elements, because it's, his contribution is still ongoing. This is a, a volume, a book that really doesn't only try to reassess Stegner and identify what is useful and what is less useful of Stegner for our time, but also tries to recover the whole Stegner,

19:28 - or something akin to it as Liesel suggests. And that includes, you know, one of our authors, Nancy Cook, wrote an essay about the Stegner Fellowships, and thinking about Stegner not just as a writer, not just as a commentator, not just as a conservationist, but also as a teacher. And I think that's a really important essay. It appears in the middle of the book. In some ways, the book turns on, on that essay, because when you start to really evaluate, the role

19:56 - that Stegner had, in the creative writing program at Stanford in the years after World War ii, you start to see that, yes, there are some famous names that, went through that program when Stegner was directing it. And of course, it's a program that continues on today, making Stanford Art Center for Creative Writing. but you actually, because of Nancy Cook's work in our book, learn about some of the, the students,

20:21 - who you may know less about. And by doing so, you learn a lot more about Stegner as a human being and what his commitments were, what his limitations were, but also the ways in which he could foster and support a wide range of students, a wide range of forms of writing, and not just the kind of handful of more famous people, who emerged from that program. And so I think, you know, learning about Stegner

20:48 - as a teacher is an, is a perfect example of how this book starts to get at this broader question of, you know, all the many different things that Stegner was. And only if you do that, that's the only way you can actually fairly evaluate fairly critique Stegner and some of his ideas and some of the work that he did, and also rehabilitate and kind of bring back and say that wow, there was some real insight here, because of those same commitments, fully human,

21:17 - a fully human stigma, deeply flawed, like all like all human beings, and yet also unlike many other human beings, someone with great insight that actually resonates through the decades. Cigna's legacy is a really important question, and I think Liesel touched upon this a little bit, but it's, it, it really is very difficult, if not impossible to assess the 20th century West, at least without considering Cigna.

21:46 - he both wrote about it and he influenced it. So if you wanna understand the 20th century American West, if you wanna understand that history, at some point, you have to reckon with Wallace Stegner. he was far from perfect, especially by today's standards, but you gotta deal with him. a really interesting contribution. the first essay after my introductory essay is by Alex Hernandez. And Alex is a rising star in the National Park Service.

22:19 - She is a young woman of color, and Alex, of course read Stegner, through her perspective. And she was very critical of Stegner. It was powerful. And she takes aim in particular at a book that Stegner wrote, one Nation in which, which appeared right after the Second World War. And ostensibly was an attempt to celebrate both the diversity and the unity of the United States. Stagner acknowledged that the United States is made up

22:50 - of all of these different kinds of people, and yet in the midst of that, the, the, the implicit assumption in all of his stigmas in all of Stegner's work was when, when he said Westerner or Western American, he really was talking about a white person, especially a white man. And I think that's very characteristic of men, especially liberal men of his time. You know, they express sympathy for awareness of,

23:22 - all kinds of people in the West. in Stegner's book Wolf Willow, he acknowledges that, Nazi Germany did not invent genocide that that happened in the American West. And that's an unusual thing to say for someone in the early 1960s. And yet, and yet still, and with all, when he said Western American, he usually had in mind a guy like himself. But here's a really interesting side of that.

23:48 - we came together, a bunch of us, at an academic scholarly meeting, the Western History Association in Los Angeles in late October. And among our presenters was Alex Hernandez. And one of the things she said is that she's discovered that in the National Park Service, which probably employs more historians and people who are oriented to history than any other government agency, she found

24:18 - that National Park Service employees, staff people still referred to Wallace Stegner, that Stegner was useful for them in talking about the American West, its problems, its beauty, in framing, ethical positions and so forth. So one of the things that Alex concluded, she stood behind her critique, she actually developed it. It was fabulous, you know, it was fantastic, a wonderful scholar, a young person.

24:46 - but in the end she said, you have to deal with Stegner. You gotta reckon with him. Readers need to take away an awareness of Stegner and see his work as an invitation. Stegner is still worth reading. Stegner still has something to say to us three decades after his passing about how to think about and act in the American West. So I hope that our book and our essays lead lead people to some of Stegner's work.

25:18 - for me, you know, the Big Rock Candy Mountain novel, Wolf Willow, which is a wonderful magical combination of fiction and history and memoir. the American West has living space. Everybody's gonna have some book of Stegner's that really speaks to them. but I think the ultimate value of our book, while the Cigna's unsettled country, is if it leads people into Cigna's work and then helps them as they try to sort out

25:47 - and deal with the problems in their particular part of the West in which they're living, you Can't just brush stigma off because it is so embedded. So contending with authors like this contending with the presence of Stegner's work and his influence, you, you can't just ignore it. we have to grapple with it. We have to reset it in our minds. I think that that's what this process really did for me, is it sort of allowed me

26:15 - to put Stagner into a better head space. Not ignore him, but not embrace him as, as he once was, right? He's not a prophet of the American West. He is a man who lived in the West and grappled with the same issues that we see today. I hope, and actually, I, I'm convinced that readers of our book will come away with two things. One, I think even if they know, Stegner's work well, they're gonna learn something new about Stegner.

26:43 - as a person, as a thinker, as a writer, as a scholar, as a teacher, as conservationist in whatever way you wanna take it, they'll learn something new about Stegner. The second thing that I think readers will take away is that, he was as significant as my colleagues suggest, he's a, he's a giant, and he simultaneously has feet of clay and brilliant, consistent and absolutely critical insights that can help us wrestle

27:09 - with the issues of our time.

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